Creative Recovery and Cultural Resiliency

While I was volunteering at the Park Slope Armory evacuation shelter I asked for advice from a member of the clergy when I encountered a problem I couldn’t solve. He told me to follow my instinct. I said I didn’t trust my instinct; the situation was far beyond my experience. He responded, “This is your opportunity to stretch yourself.” A lot of stretching has been going on in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. People, organizations, and communities have been coming together to meet a challenge and stretch in ways we had no idea were possible. In doing so we experienced the inequities exposed and exaggerated by the storm.

In A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (2009), Rebecca Solnit describes the extraordinary communities that come together following disasters and that “give us… a glimpse of who else we ourselves may be and what else our society could become.” 1 In this essay I describe how artists and cultural organizers have helped create extraordinary communities and respond to extraordinary inequities. It focuses on the ways cultural work that is rooted in community and social networks can advance a just and creative recovery and a truly resilient city. This is a stretch that goes far beyond disasters. Organized compassion, unified communities, and powerful stories last long beyond a storm.